See the pictures from the shelter where Marika ended up - stools in the corridor

2019-09-04T04:41:30.380Z

When Marika Sellgren is mentally ill for the third time, she becomes homeless. The application for a housing assistance is rejected by the social services, and instead she gets a place at a drug-tolerant shelter, where the police made 23 calls in just under five months.

58 year old Marika Sellgren is not an addict. Throughout her adult life she has lived with psychiatric diagnoses and in social services investigations it is about psychoses that come into the forest - about anxiety and depression.

Still, she ends up on Rysseviken - a drug-tolerant shelter outside Stockholm where addicts do not have to stop with their drugs. Assignment review is included as she moves in. The whole house smells bad, in the corridor is a rolled-up carpet with stools.

- It's not possible. I can't breathe here. It stinks so terribly, says Marika when she arrives at the accommodation and is going to spend her first night in a small room.

Shares accommodation with addicts

In February 2019, Marika was evicted from her rental apartment. In order not to end up on the street, she then applied for a housing assistance. But the social service refused the application, citing Marika's need for help was not large enough. Instead, she got a place at the shelter, which the social service pays.

Marika shares housing with addicts and other people with psychiatric diagnoses over 20 years.

When the Assignment Review team visits Rysseviken on several occasions, they see two staff members among the residents, otherwise there are surveillance cameras in the area.

- Unfortunately, we have had several patients on Rysseviken and we only deal with the boiler. There, after all, it is completely free to abuse. No control, says Tom Palmstierna, associate professor at KI and chief physician at Forensic Psychiatric Outpatient Stockholm.

“A mental hospital without management”

In the last five years alone, four people have died on the Russian Gulf. From January 1 to May 22 this year, the police made 23 calls to the accommodation.

- We simply don't want them to be there. But if the social services have decided to place there, then we doctors can only shut us bloody, says Tom Palmstierna.

Lars Edner is Marika's psychologist. He is retired but has continued to help her, including being able to get the apartment she was evicted from in February. He is critical that the mentally ill live in shelters such as the Russian Bay.

- It becomes like a mental hospital without management, in any way. There you can walk and trample and nothing happens, says Lars Erdner.

Rysseviken AB has declined to respond to criticism of the accommodation. In the summer of 2019, the social service changed its assessment. Marika has now moved to a short-term accommodation in central Stockholm. She doesn't know how long she will stay there.

Assignment review report Marika's fight will be broadcast on SVT1 on Wednesday, September 4 at 8 pm. You can watch it already at 12.00 on SVT Play.